How to reduce stress

Our mental, emotional and physical well-being are closely interrelated. For example, stress can trigger a cascade of physiological effects with a broad range of negative health implications. It can raise blood pressure, increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, increase vulnerability to anxiety and depression, weaken the immune system, leaving us more susceptible to viral and bacterial infections and accelerates the aging process. Thus managing stress is essential to our health and wellness.

 

To turn the other way round, we can use physical and mental ways to reduce our stress level.

 

Physiologically, stress triggers a number of neuroendocrine responses including increases in serum concentrations of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and cortisol. And so we can use this as an indicator whether our way to reduce stress level is effective or not.

 

In a recent study published in The Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, it was found that saponins, an  extract from Tribulus terrestris, which is a herb used in traditional Chinese medicine as a tonic to combat the effects of stress, can change the behavior and neuroendocrine responses in laboratory rats which had been subjected to chronic mild stress. All of the behavioral and neuroendocrine changes caused by chronic stress were significantly reduced. This indicates saponins might have the same effect on human being as well.

 

Mentally, it has long been shown that meditation lowers the cortisol level in the blood, suggesting that it can lower stress and hence decrease the risk of diseases that arise from stress.

 

Other ways to reduce stress include doing exercises, positive thinking and sharing your worries with your friends.

Have a good sleep!

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that there is a link between sleep and obesity.

 

The study, published in the August issue of Nature Communications, uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activity in relation to food choices among sleep-deprived individuals.

 

They found an increased activity in the amygdala, which spurs the urge to eat and a decreased activity in the frontal cortex, the region of the brain responsible for the rational processing of decisions and consequences. These changes in brain activity were associated with a significant increase in the desire for weight-gain promoting, high-calorie foods following sleep deprivation. Moreover, the effects were more pronounced in participants with the most severe sleep deprivation.

 

What’s especially interesting about this study is that the brain activity observed in sleep-deprived individuals was not merely associated with an increase in appetite, but a specific increase in desire for high-calorie foods, “resulting in the selection of foods most capable of triggering weight gain.”

 

Hence losing sleep can lead to gaining weight. And how to get enough sleep should be included into the program for healthy weight loss!

 

Besides sleep, vitamin D deficiency is also closely linked with obesity, although it appears that obesity causes the deficiency and not the other way around. Low vitamin D levels have been linked with disturbances in glucose metabolism and dyslipidemia.

Be careful about sunbath

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. More than 3.5 million skin cancers in over two million people are diagnosed annually. In Asians, skin cancer represents approximately two to four percent of all cancers.

There are 3 types of skin cancer - basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and melanoma.

Basal cell carcinoma is the most common form of skin cancer, an estimated 2.8 million are diagnosed annually in the US. BCCs are rarely fatal, but can be highly disfiguring if allowed to grow.

Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of skin cancer. An estimated 700,000 cases of SCC are diagnosed each year in the US.

Amongst the three, melanoma has the lowest incidence, accounts for less than five percent of skin cancer cases. But from 1970 to 2009, the incidence of melanoma increased by 800 percent among young women and 400 percent among young men in the US. And it is also the most dangerous. It is easy to spread to other organs and has the highest mortality. Although melanoma accounts for less than five percent of skin cancer cases but the vast majority of skin cancer deaths.

The overall 5-year survival rate for patients whose melanoma is detected early, before the tumor has spread to regional lymph nodes or other organs, is about 98 percent in the US. The survival rate falls to 62 percent when the disease reaches the lymph nodes, and 15 percent when the disease metastasizes to distant organs.

More than 85 percent of skin cancers are associated with exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. The sun's ultraviolet rays can induce skin cells undergo gene mutations. And the longer the exposure to UV, the higher the chance of suffering from skin cancer. One or more blistering sunburns in childhood or adolescence can cause more than double a person's chances of developing melanoma later in life.

There are two wavelengths for UV, UVA and UVB. UVA can cause skin aging, wrinkles skin tanning and also inducing skin cancer while absorbing excess UVB can burn skin and this is also one of the main causes of skin cancer. In short, more than 90 percent of the visible changes commonly attributed to skin aging are caused by the sun. And so be careful when you are sunbathing!

Why not cook foods at high temperature?

Researchers in Europe and the United States found that when certain foods heated to a temperature above 120 degrees Celsius (248 degrees Fahrenheit), a chemical substance called acrylamide produced. Moreover, the level of it appears to increase with the duration of heating. The highest levels found so far were in starchy foods (potato and cereal products such as potato chips and French fries). And this is not found when foods prepared below this temperature.

The reason for this might be due to asparagine (a kind of amino acid) which is found in many vegetables, with higher concentrations in some varieties of potatoes. When heated to high temperatures in the presence of certain sugars (reducing sugars such as fructose and glucose), asparagine can form acrylamide, especially when we use such cooking methods as frying, baking or broiling, while boiling and microwaving appear less likely to have such effect. Longer cooking times can also increase acrylamide production when the cooking temperature is above 120 degrees Celsius.

Decreasing cooking time, blanching potatoes before frying and postdrying (drying in a hot air oven after frying) have been shown to decrease the acrylamide content of some foods.

Acrylamide has so far not been found in food prepared at temperatures below 120 degrees Celsius, including boiled foods. Thus foods should not be cooked excessively, i.e. for too long or at too high a temperature.

Acrylamide is known to cause cancer in animals.  Besides, it has toxic effects on the nervous system and on fertility. But a June 2002 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization concluded the intake level required to observe neuropathy (0.5 mg/kg body weight/day) was 500 times higher than the average dietary intake of acrylamide (1 μg/kg body weight/day). In our daily diet, for example, zucchini produces only 360 micrograms per kilogram of acrylamide, garlic 200 micrograms while cabbage and Chinese lettuce less than 50 micrograms.

For effects on fertility, the level is 2,000 times higher than the average intake. From this, they concluded acrylamide levels in food were safe in terms of neuropathy, but raised concerns over human carcinogenicity based on known carcinogenicity in laboratory animals.

Thus whenever possible, we should eat foods raw. But in this case, we should be careful about the harmful effect caused by bacteria inside all foods when they have not been cooked sufficiently.